In the first episode of this series “Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s Reflections on 50 Years of Pastoral Service“, Archbishop Mark Coleridge reminisced on how in the late 1960s, amidst the societal turbulence of the era, Archbishop Mark found himself drawn to the seminary as a response to the uncertainty of the times. Influenced by the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and encountering young priests with a vibrant vision of the church during his University studies, he embarked on a journey towards priesthood in 1969. Despite initial doubts, he never regretted his decision, feeling a continuous divine calling that matured alongside his acknowledgment of personal weaknesses over the ensuing 50 years.
Watch the Archbishop’s reflection here:
Ep1 – Life as a 68er
I first thought of the Seminary when I was at University in the late 60s, I left school in 1965. Now, the 1960s were an extraordinary era, another world compared to now. And it wasn’t until 1968 that I finally decided to go to the Seminary. Now, the French have an expression of someone who grew up through that period of 1968, you’re a Soixante-huitard, you’re a 68er. Because 1968 was a year when the temperature of the earth seemed to to just rise a bit there were student protests and revolutions all around the world it was an extraordinary year, 1968, tumultuous in many ways. Papal encyclical Humanae Vitae appeared and created enormous unrest in the church, and so on.
So my reaction as a university student in those times was not to storm the barricades or to join the protest so much but to go to a seminary. I’m tempted to say to go in the opposite direction but I don’t see it like that. It was my way of responding to the tumult of the time and the sense of uncertainty in my own life because although I was only in my late teens at the time, it was a period when you thought you had to make a decision about your career early in life, even in your late teens. And stick with that decision for the rest of your life, it’s not like now when young people have five jobs before they’re thirty. It wasn’t that sort of world, so it was an utterly different world.
The other thing to keep in mind it was the years immediately after the Second Vatican Council. So I’m not only a Soixante-huitard, a 68er, I’m also a child of the Second Vatican Council because the Council ran from 1962 to 1965 and then the period after the Council was a time of in some ways a time of great unrest and uncertainty but a time of enormous vitality and creativity and energy.
So all of that was very much part of the world that I knew when I went to the Seminary and in fact, it was contact with young priests who were deeply influenced by the Second Vatican Council and its vision that really triggered in me thoughts of the priesthood because I had no thought of the priesthood when I left school. The only career I had vaguely in mind was diplomacy, God only knows why, I think it was the glamour of being overseas and all that sort of stuff. But about halfway through my University course I thought, no, I’ve got no interest in diplomacy.
But then I thought, I don’t know what I want to do and a sense of anxiety came with that because I felt I had to make a decision about my course and it was then meeting these young priests, who were students at the University that triggered in me the thought that, what about being a priest like these guys? Because I saw in them something I’d never seen before. A way of being a priest and a vision of the Church that was exciting. They made the Church seem an adventure. And it was enough to lead me to think of the priesthood in that kind of world and in that kind of way. And eventually I thought to myself towards the end of 1968, I’ve got to give this a go to get the monkey off my back.
So I went to the seminary in early 1969 in that vastly different world. Ever since then I’ve never had a moment of thinking that I made a wrong decision because I thought I might. I thought it could come disastrously unstuck, but it never has. So I’ve never had the sense I’m in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing, that I should leave. That sense of divine call has never really left me and it’s matured over the years in some ways grown deeper and stronger and more realistic And it’s a call in the midst of my weakness, and certainly through the years coming to grips with my woundedness and my weakness has been a fundamental part of the journey of these fifty years. Coming to understand what Saint Paul says, when I am weak, then I am strong.
Because in early life I was one of the strong, I was a gifted student, I was a sportsman, so I was a bit of an allrounder. So the idea of being weak and wounded wasn’t part of the agenda at all. My early life would have been a world in which you had to be strong and successful and therefore to deny anything that smacked of weakness or woundedness. But what I’ve come to see through the years is that it’s quite the contrary. That if you create a world that’s all about strength and success, you end up in a world of Illusion, and it’s deeply destructive. That the only doorway into a kind of real maturity and a real wisdom, is the doorway of your weakness and woundedness.